A Place to Call Home

There are approximately 150 kids in Travis County and more than 6,000 in Texas waiting to be adopted

By Rick Delaney

Published: December 29, 2011

At any given time, there are approximately 150 kids in Travis County and more than 6,000 in Texas waiting to be adopted. Here is the story of three families that went through the complicated and emotional adoption process. Some were successful, but some are still waiting for a child.

Four years ago, Teri Waters was sitting at her computer in her Lakeway home, scrolling through photos of smiling children in need of adoption. The thought of her only daughter, Callie, going off to college in the fall had cranked up her mom instinct. Before long, she found herself searching through the state’s adoption website, considering bringing another child into her family.

When her husband, Del, asked what she was doing, she told him about her idea. He went to a computer in another room and looked through the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange, the website that had Teri so occupied. “How about these four?” he called to her. “Four?” she hollered back. She raced across the hall and looked over his shoulder at the faces of four siblings: two in high school and two in junior high. “If we’re going to do this,” said Del, “let’s do it big.”

The Waterses, who own boat dealership The Ski Dock, took an unusual adoption route by adopting four teenage siblings. More typically, American couples want babies, and they often travel to China, Russia or Guatemala, where newborns in need of homes are plentiful, to get them. Or, in the United States, they work with private adoption agencies, desperately searching for birth parents who will select them from a long list of potential adoptive parents. They wait years to adopt, often choosing to do so because of infertility or because they want to give a child a better life, and some give up in the process.

But in Texas alone, there are more than 6,000 children in the foster care system awaiting adoption. And in Travis County, there are about 150 kids hoping to be adopted at any given time. But their cases don’t always play out like the Lifetime movies in which everything works out in the end. With limited funding and an array of challenges—older kids, groups of siblings, children with disabilities—the state has its work cut out for it as it seeks to place these children in permanent homes.

While adoption often conjures images of babies and toddlers, nearly 40 percent of children in the Texas foster care system are between the ages of 10 and 17. But as Julie Moody, media specialist at the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS), points out, “Children of all ages need committed, supportive and loving adults in their lives.”

The Waters’ case is illustrative of the joys, tribulations and surprises in store for both adopted children and their new parents. “I’m not done being a mom,” Teri says, explaining why she and her husband adopted twins Araceli and Angelica, now 18, their sister, Patty, 16, and their brother, Angel, 15. “We felt we were capable and had the resources to raise them and send them to college.” Still, it is quite a change—and quite a commitment. But, as Del puts it, “If you want me to rationalize this, we can’t even come close. They were meant to be with us.”